On Monday I rode my bicycle to work for the 3rd or 4th time. It’s about 5 miles away. I usually try to follow cars through intersections because I fell I’m less likely to get hit by another car. So I was following a blue Mustang through and he got out of the intersection much faster than I could. Meanwhile the black car to the right of us was turning left. I slowed down a little because he caught me off guard, then I continued through – well so did he. He continued to plow straight into me, just hard enough to nudge my bicycle, but not knock me over.

I uttered some obscenities at him, then continued on. He followed me down the street and I wondered to myself, does he want to hit me again? He pulled in front of me, got out of his car and began taking pictures of me, yelling about how I didn’t stop at the stop sign and I hit his car. I hit his car?!?! What planet is this guy on?

I yelled back at him, because he hit me and whether or not I ran a stop sign is irrelevant. I was fuming. He didn’t care what I had to say, I needed to make it right. I can’t just run stop signs. My insurance has to pay for it, we’re going to do this the right way, YOU WILL BE HELD ACCOUNTABLE. Oh yeah, and the damage? Could be rubbed out with rubbing compound. Not significant, at all.

A witness pulled up and got out of his car. He said he didn’t see me run the stop sign, but he did see this guy hit me.

Luckily a cop car pulled up and separated us. They took each side of the story, and gave each of us the other persons information. Said I should call my insurance company and give them his info, because they’ll probably be contacting me. And they didn’t give me a ticket for running a stop sign.

When I got home I looked into some of the bicycle laws in San Francisco. If I were to run a red light and get hit by a truck, if that truck had time to stop then he is also at fault. The man who hit me clearly had time to stop – he didn’t even knock me over. (More on these laws here)

I am convinced that this guy purposely hit me, just enough to “teach me a lesson”. Because he probably sees bicyclists going through stop signs and lights all the time, and suddenly he had the opportunity to take his frustration out on me.

Post #13 (50-100-50 – btw, I clearly suck at this challenge)